First you can use backtesting. Here you take your system and work out on paper how well it would have done on the recent historic market, i.e. The last half a year or whatever period you choose. Backtesting should give you an idea of whether a system has potential. Of course the market isn’t going to repeat in exactly the same way so you do need to take into account the indisputable fact that you might have struck lucky or unlucky and picked a time when the system performed surprisingly well or badly. The second way to test forex systems is in a demo account. On the other hand, it emulates real live trading strategies with the possibility of slippage and other things which aren’t gong to turn up in back testing. Remember that you can test many systems at the same time in a demo account, provided you keep separate records of their performance. Or you can use several demo accounts. In this fashion you’ve a better chance of ending up with at least one moneymaking system at the end of your period of testing. This gives you solid real time coaching to prepare you at present when you go live with real cash. Most foreign exchange brokers will provide free demo accounts which you may use to check foreign exchange systems.